my love is a meme.

The season is strangely empty. S1 had so many things going on and s2 sometimes feels like the creators didn’t know how to fill the time even though it’s just six episodes. Most of the flashbacks turn out not to really play a role in the story of the season and neither do they tell us anything new about Aziraphale and Crowley. While you’re watching the Job flashbacks, you think they will surely connect to the main mystery somehow because of the saying on the matchbox. Same with the Elspeth and Mr Dalrymple flashback, it must be relevant because of the pub and the statue. But then it turns out that the events of those flashbacks don’t really matter. The one with the zombie nazis was kind of obviously pointless. The Maggie and Nina thing also feels like another way to fill time. And so most of the season almost doesn’t really matter, it’s just the last episode that’s important, you can almost just watch the very beginning when Gabriel appears and then skip to the final episode.

Aziraphale is stuck in this arc of Heaven vs their own side, black and white vs shades of gray. That was his arc in season 1 and it was resolved but now they’re ending the season with him going back to square one. I love Aziraphale, I adore Michael in the role but I hate this ending of the season for him. It was really out of the blue, he didn’t seem to be having doubts throughout the season, again it’s just the finale.

Crowley, and I hate to say it, is almost irrelevant. David is electric in the role, he has an amazing presence but he doesn’t really do anything and he doesn’t have an arc. He didn’t really have one in s1 and I was hoping that would change in s2 but he still doesn’t and he barely plays a role in the plot. I think him following Aziraphale around while he is asking all the shopkeepers to attend the meeting is a pretty good representation of his role in the season.

The mystery is disappointing. I kinda like it that they went for the Gabriel/Beelzebub thing but it doesn’t have much to it and it doesn’t seem believable. It seems like they literally just hung out a couple of times and fell in love and then they just leave. Like come on, Aziraphale still can’t fully denounce Heaven and be with Crowley but the two highest authorities in Heaven and Hell went on a couple of dates and now have no qualms leaving everything behind. Both of those stories in the same narrative don’t make sense.

peeta is such a complex character and also pretty atypical for a male love interest in a straight couple even to this day. I know people say he wasn’t a damsel but he kinda was and there’s nothing wrong with that. i really like this inverted dynamic everlark have compared to typical couples: she is the warrior, she is the stoic and straightforward one, he is not a warrior, he is an artist, he is the emotionally intelligent, cunning one, he is the one that can play people. she is the fire, he is the dandelion.

i actually think the movies even tried to make him a little bit more stereotypically masculine to negate this a little, even if it wasn’t a conscious choice. they made him able bodied in catching fire onwards. also in catching fire in the very beginning of the games peeta fights some dude in the water, that doesn’t happen in the books, he couldn’t swim and had to like wait for finnick to help him get to shore. i am not saying that being disabled makes you less masculine or fighting is more masculine but that’s the way masculinity is usually portrayed. and i like that peeta is not that, i don’t think he’s weak for having to be saved. his strength lies in different things: he is extremely smart, he can read and manipulate people, but also is very kind and gentle and generous. and he saved himself in the most important way: he found himself again.